ATC for Power Failure
by Upeasterner
Summary: Who's haunted and who's cursed? Things get serious after the biddies leave and the Dutchman sets sail.


"You promised, blast it!"

Carolyn shot straight up in bed, ripped rudely from the embrace of that first pleasing tendril of sleep. After rubbing her eyes, she inventoried the sofa, the other sofa, the binnacle and finally her desk. He was nowhere in sight, though his baritone voice seemed to reverberate throughout the room.

"Hmmmpf," she mumbled finally, laying back down into the warmth of her down mattress and flouncing, finally, over on her side. She pulled the extra pillow onto her head, for good measure. "My fingers were crossed before I promised."

There was no answer save that of the waves below and the creaking of the master cabin as Gull Cottage sailed resolutely into the headwinds of yet another Atlantic storm. She wondered what her ostensible friends from the parent-teacher association would make of such a stormy night in her "strange" little home by the sea.

Earlier that afternoon, Martha filled her in on a few choice comments right after the ladies left. There was the usual litany, Carolyn thought. Things like how it wasn't natural for such a young widow to isolate herself and two lovely children from the rest of the community and, what a social snob Mrs. Muir must be, eschewing almost all overtures from the village women. Mrs. Schmidt even had the temerity to comment on the length of her skirt.

Carolyn rolled her eyes at Martha.

"Ah, but Madame, you know what they're really thinking?" Captain Gregg wagged his finger at her as he stood behind Martha's back, insinuating his thoughts into hers without so much the courtesy of a raised-eyebrow invitation.

"The same thing that I'm not thinking, or at least trying not to imagine," she thought back, irritated. "Leave it, like the ladies hopefully did. Don't start something you can't –"

"Finish, my dear?" his thoughts nudged once again against hers, and for a moment she imagined herself moving over on the sofa so he could seat himself pleasantly against her, each pretending to ignore the effect of two thighs touching on an antique settee.

She shivered deliciously at the thought, and looked up to see his eyes darkening as he stood at the mantle, gazing shamelessly in her direction.

"If you don't stop staring at that portrait, I'm going to call Dr. McNally myself," said Martha, breaking the spell without even knowing it. "Sometimes I think the Schooner Bay ladies have a point!"

Carolyn let her have the last word – or, the punch line as Daniel called it. She hoped it gave Martha some sense of control over the little household. Gravitas, that's what her Dad said Martha had. Secretly, he hoped it would rub off on his grandchildren until his daughter came to her senses.

Martha stared at Mrs. Muir. "You know, they think you talk to ghosts."

"And they did wonder," Martha continued, buttoning her coat, "how it is our road is always so well-plowed after every snowstorm!"

Carolyn waved her hand dismissively. "Would you mind picking up the kids from practice on your way to the store? I'm expecting a late phone call from New York." She smiled brightly – too brightly, Martha thought – and waited until the station wagon and Martha pulled away from the house to raise her eyes to his.

"Madame! That's hardly an admiring look." Captain Gregg said, raising his chin a notch to prepare for what he suspected was coming.

"Why didn't you touch me when that pirate ship rolled into the harbor?" There, she said it. It had taken her two days to work up the courage, and she intended to use it before he got the best of the argument.

" You had the power to touch and wasted it, fuming over PTA women and your wonderfully sudden human inability to stalk through doors!"

Carolyn rolled her eyes, but he didn't miss the glint of tears.

She could see every tiny hair on his head, backlit by the crackling fire. Even the pulse on his neck, just above the fold of his turtleneck.

So human, and yet Carolyn knew what would happen if she pushed the issue further. The curse of every ghost, he'd told her simply. To be in the world, but not of it. Separated from physical human contact in order to suffer, and by suffering discover the very reason for the haunting, for the separation from God.

They did the best they could with the dreams he mustered every night. Sometimes, they even managed to accomplish in their minds what could not happen in their bed. And yet –

"Were it that simple I would have rowed us both out to the galleon myself," he said finally, seating himself beside her. "And tossed the mad Dutchman overboard myself. What I would give to carry you off to sea, my darling."

"But the Dutchman's curse is a punishment, not a reward. If I'd had the power to touch you then, there wouldn't have been a PTA meeting. Or anyone in the house for two days, except us." She laid her head upon the back of the sofa and closed her eyes, and sighed, imagining the feel of his arm brushing the back of her hair.

"Swear you will never leave me."

"Madame?"

"That no matter how many gaggling women, boisterous children, or egregious townsfolk we have at Gull Cottage, you will sail right beside me until I some day climb aboard whatever kind of ship it is you used to sail and we disappear into the sea breeze, just like the Dutchman."

The shutters banged against the Master Cabin's windows and one flew open, awakening Carolyn once again. This time he was there in the night, seated beside her. "You must have had a bad dream, m'dear."

She blinked, and sat up, resting her weight on her elbows.

"You promised, blast it." Carolyn remembered, now. That's what she'd said. He hadn't been in the room. She woke herself up, crying out in the night. But was it a dream?

"I promised, and I never cross my fingers, m'dear. That is never a gentleman's prerogative."

He leant down and tilted his head to hers, so close he could feel her breath on his face and smell the perfume still laced across her neck.

"Schooner, m'dear. We'll catch him on a schooner."

The deck rose and fell beneath them, and when Carolyn opened her eyes they stood on the deck of a tall ship, she sandwiched between him and the ship's wheel that used to be on their patio.

She laughed, and pointed at the horizon.

"Follow that Dutchman!" They were of it, but not in it, this world of the Flying Dutchman.

"I tried," the Captain thought, shielding his mind from her. "I tried, by Jove."

Not for the first time, he wondered who was haunted and who was cursed. It wasn't the Dutchman.


End file.
